Guidelines

I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :








Monday, May 16, 2022

Why Does the School District's 1/2 Cent Sales Tax Outperform the County's 1/2 Cent Sales Tax?

 At a recent BCC meeting where we discussed my idea of funding the fire service with a consumption-style 1/2 cent sales tax to generate more revenue while simultaneously not adding more taxes to existing property owners--and instead providing a big tax break to Escambia County property-owning taxpayers-----a lowball figure of $24-$25 Million was thrown out as being "what the county's half penny generates yearly"

It seemed low, that figure.  

And I remembered as a school board member we were doing that amount 5-6 years ago when I served on that board.  Plus, the economy locally has gone straight up like a rocket since then--with the minor COVID recession of 2020-2021 (the economic pain of which was largely masked-over with unprecedented federal money printing and stimulus provision nationwide to).

So the natural question is this:  Why Does the School District's 1/2 Cent Sales Tax Outperform the County's 1/2 Cent Sales Tax?

Look at this chart, below, that will be provided to the members of the school district's 1/2 cent sales tax watchdog committee later this week.  This graph indicates the total revenue (quarterly and monthly reimbursements including interest/investment income on the funds)  received from the school district's 1/2 cent discretionary sales tax over several fiscal years.  Over the last 3 years the average revenue is what I thought the BCC's 1/2 sales tax should be--just under $30 million per year.

So I'm waiting for staff to clarify/explain--but it seems to me that their 1/2 penny is doing better than ours is.  So if so, I want to know why.  If not-----what is the real number the BCC's 1/2 penny is generating?  I think my statements at the last meeting were right--$30 Million yearly.

But we will see when staff answers my query on this topic later this morning.


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